This year, geography project (grade 9). I generally try to work alone to avoid troubles from group members, and I usually produce good enough work to get the high grades my parents expect. Also, whenever I'm in a group, I usually try to take over the entire project and make all the decisions, and the rest of my group doesn't usually mind because I take on a big chunk of the work. So we gather in a group. I'm with one friend and this other girl. We start discussing different ways to do the project. I want to make an informative, yet entertaining video, in order to not put the class to sleep, and avoid standing in front of the class telling boring information, as well as get a good grade. We also have to fill up 20-30 minutes of class time, so I suggest we play a trivia (Jeopardy-style) game that I could write in Visual Basic. Now, the one girl that was in our group wanted REALLY BADLY to do a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. I told her that keynotes generally end up being boring, and that I think we should do a video. My friend is on the side, and doesn't really care what we do, as long as we get a good grade. The girl argues that if we make a video and a game, it won't consist of a "true" oral presentation. I think that's her only objection, so I say that we should go ask the teacher, being about 95% sure that it'll pass, because she's a fairly technologically advanced teacher, and I generally do video projects when I can. She's ok with it. We go back to our desks to discuss more, and I start talking about what can go into our video. Then she says that she "doesn't care that we're allowed to make a video, we're doing a PowerPoint". Now, I was fairly surprised, because this had never happened to me before. So I vote with my friend, and we outnumber her two to one to make a video. My friend says he can record his part on the weekend if I can send him an outline of what to say, which I'm very ok with. He said he'd do the in-depth research for his part anyway. The girl was all upset that we didn't want to do a PowerPoint, so she says that she doesn't want to be in the video, though she also said she was not afraid of being on video, and that she only wanted her voice in it, with a slideshow of pictures or text on top of hers. I'm alright at making cartoons, so I suggest that we animate her, so only her voice would be in it. My friend thinks it's cool, but she's pretty upset that I found a way around her attempt to foil our video. She goes to vent to one of her friends, who proceeds to get upset with us over our rejection of her PowerPoint.
So, somehow, this gets my friend to side with her to make a PowerPoint in order to avoid this nonsense. I don't want to back down over this, so he suggests a compromise, we make both a video and a PowerPoint. I accept, as long as the girl makes the PowerPoint, because I'll be busy with the video. She says ok. I think everything's great. Then she starts arguing that we must only make a 5 minute video, and do all the rest in the PowerPoint, with the game acting as a filler to make sure we match our 20 minute requirement. I argue against it, and my friend suggests we split the content between the two mediums. I'm fairly upset, because this is just ridiculous. And somehow, we end up overlapping a bunch of stuff in the video and PowerPoint.
So I go home, film my part, add my friend's part, and animate the girl's part. I also make the game in VB.NET. Then I get a notification that she's done the PowerPoint. I decide to look it over. I look in it, and discover she's gone PowerPoint crazy. I mean, images everywhere, random font changes, template changes, colour changes, all sorts of inconsistencies. So I duplicate the PowerPoint, and open it in Keynote. I use an hour fixing everything, making everything nice and uniform, and I re-upload it to our shared Dropbox folder. I notify them that I made "minor changes", though I really made some serious edits. Then the girl is all offended that I dared to modify what she made. I vent to my family over what's going on, and how I'm pretty annoyed at this entire situation, and they turn against me, saying that "I must accept other people's work and trust that they did a good job". Now I'm really not happy.
Eventually, my friend goes in, and suggests another compromise. We can keep my uniformity, but we should add back her random images (many of which were random cliparts from who knows where). I ask if I can at least edit them so they don't look so clunky, and swap out some that really look bad, and he accepts. I go in and waste another half hour or so fixing up the images and putting them in so they don't look completely ridiculous. Girl comes back and is upset again that her original presentation wasn't gonna be used.
Next day, her friend is cheesed at me again for modifying the disaster of a PowerPoint presentation. I just ignore her, not willing to put up with that nonsense anymore.
Anyway, back home, and I'm working on something again (can't remember if it was the video or the game), and the girl starts getting mad at us again for not using her original work, complaining about random things, such as the slightly different order the PowerPoint is in (I either split one of the slides or merged them, don't remember, and added a new one or something like that, so it was a bit different), and she was all upset that she didn't want to make new cue cards to match up with the new and improved order. There were nine slides, then I realized that I missed one (which she didn't mention, by the way), and I re-added it. I offered her to give her that slide and then she was ok with everything. Really. ALL SHE WANTED WAS TO HAVE ONE SLIDE MORE THAN THE REST OF US, TO LOOK LIKE SHE DID MORE WORK. But I agreed, knowing that due to the video and game, it was made obvious that she in fact did not do most of the work, her being the only one that didn't even bother to film.
Last day before presentation. She tells me I have to animate EVERYONE's segment so she doesn't look ridiculous. I'm tired, and have other stuff to do, so I say no. She's all upset again, but she can't do a thing about it.
Anyway, we get to presentation day, and we finally present. We go past our minimum, and all is well. The video goes well, and she's fairly embarrassed that she's the only animated one, but everyone laughs when they see her segment. Then, despite the fact that I built the game, and know exactly how to work it, she ABSOLUTELY wants to run the game. I let her, and she messes something up, forcing me to use the score modifier to fix what she messed up. I think everything went ok for the rest of the presentation, and we got a good grade, but oh man that was a horrible presentation to make. I don't think the PowerPoint contributed anything meaningful to the presentation, and it was just an obstacle in our work. 0/10 would work with her again.
I know it doesn't seem that bad in text, and I think I'm missing some details (this was a few months ago). But believe me, in real life, this was a nightmare of a project to begin with. I'd much rather do a project alone.
TL;DR: Please don't try to make a PowerPoint